Yesterday was a day of very mixed feelings about Apple. I had problems with the OS X 10.5 Leopard upgrade on both machines, but the ultimate result on my Mac Book Pro seems decent.

On my MBP, this happened. There was a good 45 minutes of extreme panic on my end as I had neglected to back things up first (yes, I know I know I know).

On my G5–two problems!  First, the lovely blue screen. I had no blinking idea I had APE installed or whatever. So, my fault I suppose?

Second, now when logged in as myself, the Finder grinds and grinds and beachballs and hangs; I re-launch: it grinds and grinds and beachballs and hangs. All while taking up about 75% of both CPUs. Some things will launch, really important useful things that might help me fix it (ahem, sysprefs anyone?) won’t. Awesome. Yeah, it’s a sort of known issue. And, yes, if I use the visitor account and log in, it’s fine. But I’ve tried deleting com.apple.finder.plist as advised on my account and a few other system-looky prefs and I’m still in a very sad boat of affairs. I’ll have to start pulling out preferences by the handful later today, I guess. Any advice?  For now, I have stuff to do and I’ll use the MBP.

I’m kind of gun shy to upgrade the Mini downstairs.

As for the MacBook Pro, things are going along OK now.

• Mail: I like the new Mail App pretty well so far, but I find myself constantly trying to click on the top-left header that says “Mailboxes” because that’s where my inbox used to sit. That’s going to take some retraining.
• CoverFlow in the Finder: I thought it was a ridiculous bell-whistle-eye-candy-distraction-CPU-sucking whatever when I saw it first. But I have to admit: I like it. Quick Look is pretty neat, too.
• Stacks: Organizing my downloads alone is kind of worth price of admission.
• Spaces: Not sure yet. I’ve always thought I wanted virtual desktops, but I’m not sure how I’m going to use this just yet.
• Time Machine: Stands with the potential to completely change my life. I am going to admit right now, right here: I am a terrible backer-upper. And I deal with the kinds of things every day that would be horrible to lose: photographs, music. I suck. I just made enough room on an external USB drive for Time Machine to start its magic. We’ll see how it goes.
• Is it just me or does the new gradient on the file/menu bar make it look really dim and low-contrast? Drives me kind of batty.
• Mail again: I think I like the To-dos being here (and using the same To-dos as iCal) but I wish they were a bit more full-featured.
• Sync: I’ve had some weird, apparently non-conflicting Address Book entries claim they’re conflicting a couple of times. Not sure what’s up with that.